Notches on a stone disk called an ancient star map

Italian scientists investigated the arrangement of incisions in a stone disk discovered at the ancient site of Lupine Piccolo and concluded that the object could be a star map. The researchers thought that the 28 dots might correspond to stars in the constellations Scorpius, Orion, Taurus, and Cassiopeia. The exact age of this artifact is unknown, but it was found on monuments dating from around 1800 BC to 400 BC. found. This was reported in an article published in the journal Astronomische Nachrichten.

During the Bronze Age, the Castellian archaeological culture arose in Istria. Its name comes from the numerous fortified settlements “castellere” (translated as “small castles”), which were usually built by the ancient inhabitants of the region. top of the hill. According to archaeologists, these ruins were built between 1800 and 1650 BC. It existed from BC to around 400 BC. People live there. Among the finds from the monuments of the Castellan culture is a stone disk approximately 0.5 meters in diameter, whose purpose remains unknown, but it is thought that it may have been used for ritual purposes.

Paolo Molaro from the Trieste Observatory and Federico Bernardini from Ca’ Foscari University were interested in one of the stone discs from the Castelleran culture. It was discovered in the 1970s during excavations at the Lupine Piccolo site near the border between Italy and Slovenia. Scientists noticed that the object, which was made of local limestone and about 50 centimeters in diameter and 30 centimeters thick, had incisions carved by a chisel-like object. There are a total of 29 markings on the disc. 24 on one side and 5 on the other. Molaro and Bernardini say these cuts are probably not randomly distributed, but form groups.

They conducted a statistical analysis to compare the location of points in the ancient cluster from where the stone disk was discovered. According to the researchers, 28 of the 29 marks closely match several easily identified star groups (asterisms) in the constellations Scorpius, Orion, Taurus (Pleiades), and Cassiopeia. He says he will.

Only one of the markers did not match any of the bright stars in the suspected cluster. But scientists believe that, as astronomer Alessandro Bressan described it, this point could be a sign of a now-defunct star in the constellation Orion, such as a star that exploded as a supernova or collapsed into a black hole without an eruption. He proposes the idea that this may represent a supernova failure. ). . The age of the discovered stone disk remains unknown. The discovered settlement existed from 1800-1650 BC to 400 BC. B.C.

source: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/asna.20220108